


Paying The Piper

by J_Baillier



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Addiction, Asperger Syndrome, Bored Sherlock, Drama, Friendship, Gen, Humor, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock is a Brat, Sherlock-centric, mild hints at johnlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-27 03:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7600843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Baillier/pseuds/J_Baillier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has plucked up the courage to leave Sherlock alone in the flat for the first time after the detective has quit smoking. Predictably, everything is <i>terrible</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is for J, who once told me to turn bad days into prose. As you see, I'm taking your advice.
> 
> Beta help was received from a wonderful group of wicked ladies I have the privilege of enjoying the fandom life with. You know who you are.

>   
>  _“Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.”_  
>  Edgar Allan Poe

  
  


That morning John had made him sit on the sofa. "This is so you'll actually _listen_ , instead of doing everything but," John had said. Sherlock had obeyed, but with a loud scoff, since he could easily listen and do something else simultaneously, whenever he so chose.

"I've told you, it's completely unnecessary for you to be employed elsewhere. It interferes with our Work."

John had smiled and sat down in his usual chair. His palms had been on his knees - something he tends to do when the topic of the discussion is making him slightly uncomfortable. "I'm a self-sufficient, grown man. I worked for fourteen years to qualify as a GP - not going to let that go to waste. Besides, I can't keep leeching off your trust fund or whatever your seemingly infinite supply of money is."

"It's a combination of-"

John had had the utter _gall_ to interrupt him, palms now raised dismissively. "None of my business, and really beside the point. I don't want to get into this again since I have to leave in five minutes. What I wanted was to go through our strategy."

" _Your_ strategy."

" _Our_ strategy, which _you_ agreed on last Thursday when we decided--"

" _You_ decided."

" _We_ decided that a Thursday was a good a day as any for you to quit those nicotine patches, since you've been off the smokes for two weeks already. You asked me, quote, 'What will I do, then, when you're not at home and there's no case and the universe drives me mad and I can't even smoke'. This is what we planned, together, so that you wouldn't get into trouble."

Sherlock had sighed so deeply that the knot in the fabric belt of his dressing gown had gotten a little tighter.

"Let me hear it, please."

With a well-honed glare, Sherlock had leaned his elbows on his knees. "1. Make tea and drink it. Several times, if it helps. 2. Talk to Mrs Hudson. 3. Talk to Molly. 4. Go for a walk but only if you think you can manage not to score or buy cigarettes. 5. If and only if, there's a lit cigarette or a syringe of something in your hand already, _call John immediately_ ," he had recited dutifully and only with the slightest hint of mockery.

"One alteration: Mrs Hudson isn't at home today."

"I know. Her reading club is taking an Agatha Christie location tour."

"How'd you deduce that?" John had asked with a very pleasant look of admiration beginning to bloom on his face. Sherlock would have loved to lie, whip up some juicy minuscule detail that he could have extrapolated it all from, but he'd been feeling too on edge, too irritated to bother. "Saw the ticket on her fridge door."

"Oh." John had looked disappointed and Sherlock had had a sudden urge to point out that he's not a one trick pony who can produce mysteries out of thin air.

John's eyes had descend to Sherlock's fingers which he'd been curling and uncurling nervously. "You're awfully twitchy today. Are you sure it's not too early to leave you to your own devices for a whole day? I do need to work, but you've done so well so far, I don't want to wreck it by disappearing on one of your off days."

Sherlock had detested the notion that he needs babysitting. "Go, work." He had flicked his hand dismissively towards the door. 

John had pursed his lips but gotten up from his usual chair, grabbing his coat and heading for the door. "I promised to keep my phone on for you but that means no texting unless it's an emergency."

Sherlock had picked on the side of a nail with another nail. 

"Look at it this way - I won't be here to disturb your experiments and you can read in peace without my thinking bothering you."

Sherlock had made a noncommittal grunt and grabbed his violin.

"Bye, then," John had said. 

Sherlock hadn't deigned to reply.

He'll be perfectly fine. He has managed thirty-odd years without John there to keep him company and curb his bad habits.

 

 

He only plays for an hour instead of a longer practice session he'd been planning. All the notes are somehow wrong, and he keeps getting distracted by the idiotic melody John had been humming all week. This is exactly what happens when there are no cases and no nicotine and his mind stagnates and withers: useless crap begins setting into the nooks and crannies. It's like someone setting up cheap doilies in his neatly arranged, aesthetically pleasing Mind Palace. 

_HUMMING IS BANNED FROM NOW ON, PUNISHABLE BY BODILY HARM. SH_ , he texts and then realizes this may not have constituted an emergency.

 _DULY NOTED. NOW SHUT UP, UNLESS YOU WANT ME TO TURN MY PHONE OFF_ , is John's reply.

At least he'll still have email. John checks that at the clinic, does he not? Sherlock certainly hopes so.

He rosins the bow, relishing the feel of its horse hairs on his fingers. It's wonderfully distracting and the repetitive movements are like balm on his racing mind. 

His brain feels like a cone of ice-cream, melting in the sun and oozing through the cracks until there's nothing but an empty, hard shell left.

Sherlock steals a glance at the skull. He knows how it must feel, languishing on that mantlepiece, deprived of any meaningful activities. 

A case would be nice, but at this rate he'll soon reach a state in which it'll be very hard to be in the presence of others. The sheer stupidity of their questions, the wasteful and purposeless manner in which they employ the English language and the incessant need to explain his thought processes to lesser intelligences is taxing on his good days, and on these sorts of days when he feels as though he might combust from tedium, and others talking to him feels akin to nails on a blackboard.

Except for John, of course, for reasons yet unknown. It presents a wonderful puzzle, but Sherlock can hardly gather new pieces of data for it without the man being present.

 

 

John's plan is terribly flawed, which is unsurprising when taking into consideration John's lacking performance level in the cerebral department. 

Sherlock would undertake step one, if they had tea. There are no teabags, nor is there any loose-leaf either. The only thing even remotely resembling the dried leaves of the _Camellia sinensis_ , also known as tea plant, an evergreen shrub of the genus _Camellia, pinyin_ in Chinese --- _Oh shut up_ , he commands himself. When no new facts or any interest are entering his neural pathways, old ones begin seeping out.

As he'd been thinking, the only thing resembling tea that he can find is a packet of chamomile, which John sometimes uses to coax Sherlock to sleep instead of pacing in the sitting room. It's completely homeopathic, of course, but Sherlock appreciates the warm sentiment in that gesture. It's nice to have someone care how his night goes, even if it's mostly for the quality of John's own slumber. He always drinks the chamomile concoction even though it tastes like old socks. Sentiment.

Chamomile is certainly not tea, nor is rooibos. Only genuine tea will do, and if he can't make it he'll have to skip step one of John's flawed, terrible, ridiculous plan.

Perhaps he ought to inform John of this development.

He strides to the couch, spreads the lapels of his dressing gown and floats down into a sitting position. He opens John's laptop, effortlessly guesses the current password - the last name of the murder victim in their latest case - and fires off an email.

> From: s.holmes@thescienceofdeduction.co.uk  
>  To: jwatson@gmail.com  
>  Subject: Step 1  
>  Message: There is no tea. Implementing step 1 impossible. SH

  


Ha. There. That will send the doctor reeling.

He leaves the laptop open on the seat next to him, and leans back.

He coughs. John had warned him that a cough might bother him for some time, ' _it's just your lungs getting rid of all the gunk you've accumulated through the years_ '. 

He'd take an extra layer of it, right now, if he could inhale just one glorious lungful of smoke. Just one, but it doesn't work that way. It's annoying how the craving always hits like this - some errant memory overwhelms him with what is akin to a waking dream of how it feels - the calming rush of that first puff. The patches never gave him that same feeling, since the onset of their action was much slower.

Traffic sounds drift in from an open window. The weather is sunny, spring is just beginning and air dust particle counts must be at their highest in London. Some of it is metal particles from car brakes. Sherlock makes a mental note to tell that to John sometimes. As a doctor he's bound to appreciate such a fact. It might have implications in lung pathology. Then again, it might somehow launch him off on a tangent to another tirade about how much more stupid smoking is compared to just poking one's head out of the flat.

His skin feels too small and prickly. It's an illusion, of course, but an irritating one - the haptic hallucinatory equivalent of scratchy wool on bare skin. Grandmére had once imposed a monstrous woollen vest on him, made from the scratchiest variety of them all, Icelandic lopi. He'd been six years old, and screeched like a barn owl. Mummy had tutted and Mycroft had shot a rubber band at his head.

Why was Mycroft not featured on John's list of possible distractions to rescue Sherlock from the vices of tobacco? ' _The two of you arguing gives me a headache_ ,' John had once said, but that would hardly happen from a distance of 5,4 kilometres now would it?

Still, he is not willing to engage The Older Brother this early in the proceedings. He's not going to fan the flames of Mycroft's delusions of importance.

An email arrives.

> From: jwatson@gmail.com  
>  To: s.holmes@thescienceofdeduction.co.uk  
>  Subject: Re: Step 1  
>  Message: You know where Tesco is. Put on your coat and go.  
>  Ps. no need to sign your emails, I can see who it is from the sender field

  


First the man bans smoking, now he bans even decent letter formats. Sherlock is not going to comply, lest there be anarchy.

He's _not_ going to Tesco. There are at least 15 reasons not to do so, but he decides against listing them to John. He's not in the mood to get into an argument via email. He prefers to deliver his venom by text or in front of a live audience. 

 

 

 

Sherlock briefly considers starting a new experiment. John had mentioned a possibility for undisturbed experiments, hadn't he?

He decides against it in the end, because John doesn't like his experiments, not really. At least not the recent ones, not even a rather decent one on the flammable properties of tensile cotton fibres. Sherlock had received a stern lecture after that one, which could have only been more demeaning if John had sent him back to his room without dinner. The lecture had started with the poetic words ' _what the everloving fuck_ ' and ended with ' _that blowtorch is never going near any of my socks again, you hear me?_ "

 

 

He does laundry. John often complains that he avoids chores like The Black Plague, which is a ridiculous analogy since the Black Plague is not currently endemic in Britain. The reason he rarely bothers with such useless pastimes is that they usually get done anyway, by either Mrs Hudson or John. It's a good system, really, since it frees up Sherlock's time for thinking.

He does laundry by hanging the wet clothes he finds in the washing machine up to dry by swinging the items to hang over the railing of the shower curtain. His own clothes, not John's. Surely he isn't supposed to go fiddling around with a flatmate's underpants? John does so hate it when he gives tabloids such fodder.

He fights the urge to email John to point out his domestic endeavours. Then again, they have not benefited the good doctor, so Sherlock refrains. 

 

 

Step 3: talk to Molly.

He's not going to talk to Molly. He'd already texted her, inquiring after any available body parts offering research opportunities, and received a reply: 

_SORRY QUIET WEEK_

He's not going to call Molly to talk, because he refuses to be subjected to stories about cats, random facts about cats, uninteresting details about Molly's love life or lack thereof, or - worst of all - concerned inquiries as to why on Earth Sherlock would be calling her just for smalltalk.

 

 

There's a weight on the bottom of his stomach that seems to hum with static electricity. It's like a thundercloud in the distance - not yet dangerous, but can't be ignored. 

' _This is how he processes anxiety - turns it into a physical symptom_ ', a Harley Street child developmental psychiatrist had explained to his parents while he'd been in the same room. 

It's not anxiety this time that is gnawing at him - at least not all of it. It must be withdrawal, still.

He has nothing to be anxious about, yet that very fact makes him suspicious, too alert and creates these sorts of phantom pains.

The tendons of his right thumb are throbbing and he realizes it's from rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. He must've been doing that for an extended period of time. A nervous tic, a remnant of childhood habits.

This is ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with him. There's _everything_ wrong with a universe that tortures him with such pointlessness, such soul-sucking boredom with no one there to provide any reasonable distractions. 

There is a possible solution. A literal solution.

Methyl-3-benzoyloxy-8-methyl-8-azabicyclo-octane-2-carboxylate. Benzoylmethylecgonine for short. _Cocaine_ among friends.


	2. Chapter 2

_Methyl-3-benzoyloxy-8-methyl-8-azabicyclo-octane-2-carboxylate. Benzoylmethylecgonine for short. Cocaine among friends._

Better, much better than nicotine. Also, infinitely worse when it comes to kicking the habit, since nicotine merely calms him down whereas the cocaine actually allows his neurons to swerve to whole new paths of thinking. Mycroft keeps insisting it doesn't work that way - that it merely serves to make him a volatile, impulsive, manic idiot, but what does that ponce know about such things anyway? Not everyone gets born emotionally constipated like him. 

Sherlock wonders, purely academically of course, if John could tell what he'd done if he used his emergency stash right now. It's barely 11 am. It will be at least four and a half hours before John gets home. On occasion his breath wheezes slightly afterwards due to the bronchospasm caused by cocaine even though, according to pertinent literature, that should only occur with inhalational use. The mostly involuntary grinding of teeth that can last days John could easily chalk up to his generalized antsy mood today, but the vivid nightmares and uncharacteristically increased appetite would be hard to hide. 

The emergency stash stays where it is. 

John would be so disappointed if he succumbed to the temptation.

 

 

Lestrade is ignoring his texts, so Sherlock calls him. "Case?" Sherlock asks hopefully when the DI picks up the call.

"Sorry, not right now," Lestrade replies, his voice a strained whisper.

"Why are you speaking like that?"

"I'm at a victim sensitivity and communication training seminar."

"Eugh," is Sherlock's assessment.

"Dead on. It means that there are no cases I could get you this week, unless we get a major serial killer or something that would make them pull the plug on this thing." 

"Here's hoping. What about Dimmock, then?"

"Sitting two rows ahead of me," Lestrade snorts.

"What about.... Donovan?" Sherlock asks carefully.

"You'd work with _her_?"

Sherlock ponders this for a moment. It wouldn't bode well to reveal the full extent of his desperation to the DI. Lord knows he might use it to blackmail him for some inane favour. "That was meant as a quip, Inspector."

"Whatever." Sherlock can practically _hear_ the eyeroll. "I've got to go. I promise I'll get in touch when there's something that might catch your fancy. A nice, juicy arsonist or something."

 

 

Sherlock drapes himself across the sofa, head dangling from the headrest, eyes closed and a forlorn, hopefully very deceased expression on his face. He snaps a picture of himself by holding the phone in his outstretched hand, and sends it to Mycroft. 

That'll teach the ponce not to take calls.

After precisely 47 seconds, the phone rings.

"I can see by your strained bicep and the angle from which that photo was taken that it is what is colloquially known as a _selfie_ ," his brother remarks dryly at the other end of the line. He articulates that last word as though a live viper had suddenly teleported into his mouth. 

"Worth a try."

"As tries go, I'm sure a sixth former could have staged a better death scene - one that would at least hint at a _cause_ of death." Mycroft sighs. "Dr Watson kindly warned me beforehand that you might pester me today. I wish you'd understand that other people have actual jobs, instead of self-insert ones such as yours."

 

 

There's a loud, high-pitched banging noise coming from somewhere. Sherlock turns to his side on the sofa, trying to pinpoint the source. It sounds as though it's coming below their apartment, clearly in the same building. It's the exact same note as that glass-shatteringly horrible one in the aria of the Queen of The Night in Mozart's Magic Flute. Sherlock had adored that opera as a little boy until he'd grown out of Mozart and moved onto more intellectually stimulating composers. He had always hated that particular aria, though, covering his ears with his palms even at the English National Opera where he'd been taken as a congratulatory present after clearing the entrance exams for Harrow.

John likes Mozart, despite its cheery, bourgeois tones. It's the musical equivalent of lukewarm bath water. Still, John's penchant for it over more refined music is a flaw Sherlock is charitably willing to overlook in a man otherwise as full of admirable qualities as John Watson. 

The banging is even louder now. Sherlock drags himself to a sitting position and flings his legs onto the cold floor, curling his toes. He should have worn socks, but the ones that aren't in the wash clash with the blue stripes of his dressing gown. It would drive him mad.

John has never grasped the concept of colour-coordination. The man thinks that faded beige can be used as a placeholder for any colour. 

There's a bit of shouting, now, accompanying the banging, and the sound has shifted so that Sherlock is now certain it's coming from the front of the building.

He leaps off the sofa and strides to the window. Since the source cannot be found by just looking through the glass, Sherlock opens the latch, pulls open the window and pokes his head through. 

Looking down, he sees a scaffolding being erected in front of the building. A level of it has been placed right below their window, and a twenty-something, thin caucasian man with dreadlocks tied into a bundle with a colourful ropes, looks up at him. He had been attaching two pieces of scaffold tubing together. He raises his hand with a smile.

"What is going on?" Sherlock asks with a put-upon tone.

"Speedy's getting its front painted, yeah? And the French balconies or whatever those grates are called, gettin' painted at the same time?"

Another man is standing next to the scaffolding on the street, attaching some sort of a winch system to the construction.

"I was not informed of this. You are to cease this instant," Sherlock commands the dreadlocked man.

"Yo, dude, they sent you a letter, eh?" 

Sherlock grimaces at the word 'dude'. He has been called many names before, most of them unpleasant, but this is a first. "I have received no such thing. Surely an extensive renovation project requires the permission of all landlords in the building."

"Look, man, I got them paperwork right 'ere." He leans forward to dig something out of his back pocket and from his position above the man Sherlock catches a most unwanted glimpse of arsecrack. If there's one thing that Sherlock has even agreed with Mycroft on, it's that there should be a bylaw about wearing properly fitting trousers. The man begins reading the crumpled piece of paper. "Here I've got Mr Chatterjee from the shop, the Speedy's people, a Mrs Martha Hudson, a Mrs Moira Turner, and a Mr Bonner-Lowery who probably owns the rest o' the house." 

He shoves the papers back to his pocket, picks up his tubing pieces and starts screwing them together again. 

"We're _not_ done here," Sherlock bellows icily.

"Look, man, if you gotta problem, call the number on the le'er. I got work to do," he says, takes a swig of water from a repurposed Pepsi bottle and ignores Sherlock.

Sherlock pulls his head and shoulders back into the apartment and scoffs, leaving the window open.

What letter? There has been no letter!

Surely this constitutes enough of a crisis to call John.

He does exactly that while pacing around the sitting room, nearly tripping on an old newspaper.

John answers on the third ring, which mean that he had probably been with a patient. Sherlock had once timed it for future reference - three rings is how long it takes to apologize to someone for the distraction, get up from a desk and fetch a phone from a coat pocket, provided the coat isn't in another room.

"What is it?"

"You didn't tell me there was going to be construction!" Sherlock accuses.

"A letter came for you, which I opened since you always tell me to go ahead and do that. I left the letter on your laptop."

"Which is where?"

"I put it on your bed yesterday, assuming you'd see it. You didn't sleep on the couch again, did you?"

"No," Sherlock says, hoping John will drop this useless line of inquiry.

"You didn't sleep, then, period?"

Sherlock rubs the back of his neck with his fingers, pursing his lips. 

"I'll take that as a no, then. Wait, how'd you email me if you've not fetched your laptop?"

"Goodbye," Sherlock says and ends the call.

He goes back to the window, grimacing as the dusty street air makes his curls flop around. He gets a sudden urge to shower. He hates having any sorts of outside muck on himself. He can't ignore a stain, a pebble in the tiny canyons of rubber at the bottom of his shoe, and he always cuts out all labels from his clothing before wearing them. He's quite certain that more than an hour spent with a ticklish washing instruction label chafing a man's lower back could be ample enough motive for murder.

So could this incessant, terrible _banging_!

He grabs his phone and texts frantically, the plastic of the keyboard practically groaning under the harsh treatment.

_CONSTRUCTION AT 221 BAKER STREET FACADE TO CEASE IMMEDIATELY. SH_

He pokes his head out of the window, scathingly glaring at the construction workers below who seem oblivious to his presence.

A text message chimes.

_I DOUBT IT CONSTITUTES A NATIONAL EMERGENCY. MIGHT I SUGGEST EARPLUGS? MH_

Sherlock retreats from the window with an irritated grunt, closes it and slides his phone to his dressing gown pocket.

 

 

There's a crack in the wall next to the dresser in his bedroom which he has not noticed before. Then again, he rarely spends much time there really looking at things. 

Why would he spend time in the bedroom, when John is usually in the kitchen or the livingroom?

A lonely, black, nondescript sock has been abandoned under the bed. Whose is it? Their laundry items have a tendency to get mixed up, but only the clean ones. This looks as if it's been worn.

He always puts his used clothes on the chair, not under the bed. 

Sherlock dangles the sock between his thumb and forefinger. It looks the right size as to be his. 

Is this the best case he's going to get to solve today?

He drops the sock on the floor. He's not going to expend the energy to take a single damned sock to the laundry basket in the bathroom. Nor should he be expending this much energy on thinking about the laundry in the first place.

John ought to be home. He makes things so much more _interesting_ by simply existing. It's an uncanny ability which, judging by John's words and actions, Sherlock also possesses. There are not many who have realized this life-enriching property of Sherlock's, and he doesn't believe in it himself. He has plenty enough evidence to the contrary.

How has it come to pass that he, of all people, had managed to acquire a _friend_?

What luck that he had come across the only member of the human race who would truly look at him and think 'brilliant' and 'amazing' even after the novelty of his intellect had worn off and his more unsightly traits had begun to manifest? How was it possible, that when John looked at him he saw something like that, instead of the 'young man of most nervous and arrogant constitution with severe problems in peer interaction' that the Harrow headmaster had, or the impressive cluster of psychiatric and developmentally challenged diagnoses that had defined his medical records from early childhood?

It would have been nice to have--- _this_ \---- when he'd been younger. Perhaps some of the worse periods his life may not have materialized, had there been someone like John around. Or maybe they still would have. A friend could hardly have imparted to him all the practical lessons of youth.

The flat feels empty. Sherlock himself feels as though the rope of his boat had been cut off. 

It's frightening, really, this invisible tether that ties him to John. Does John feel it, too, and does it console him as much as it does Sherlock?

Sherlock decides he's being pathetic. Five hours, twenty-two minutes and an unknown number of seconds alone, and he's becoming maudlin and sentimental.

He starts a text before remembering John's instructions. If he's to keep his friend, he ought to respect those rules now that they have actually been made clear to him. It won't be long until he unwittingly commits some other sort of faux pas again and aggravates the man. Better make use of this framework put into place for today.

Email, then. The laptop is on his bed, just as John had pointed out, and on it lies an opened letter informing him of cafe renovations, facade painting and French balcony restoration imminent today.

> From: s.holmes@thescienceofdeduction.co.uk  
>  To: jwatson@gmail.com  
>  Subject: finances  
>  Message: Most of what you refer to as "my" money comes from _our_ cases, which makes it equally legitimate for you to use it. No need for external employment.

John must be on his lunch break, since he replies immediately.

> From: jwatson@gmail.com  
>  To: s.holmes@thescienceofdeduction.co.uk  
>  Subject: Re: finances  
>  Message: I can't revalidate my licence to practice without working regularly and if I can't revalidate, I have to relinquish it according to GMC regulations. Did you get the tea?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brace yourselves - we're going to _Tesco_.

Sherlock discovers his stomach growling. He might remember when he'd last eaten if he really put some effort into it, but he's not in the mood. What he really wants is tea. Not the beverage per se, but tea in a mug as made by John, as consumed by the two of them in the living room. A reassuringly familiar tableau which means that everything is right in the world.

He feels off kilter. Routine is not something he relishes, but when there's nothing going on that would supply his brain with enough to do, the routines John has instigated help. They offer a framework to anchor his wandering mind into place. He's bad at initiating and maintaining routine himself - John does all that for him - which is why it's so much easier to bear an idle day at home with the man present, as opposed to the currently reigning abhorrent chaos.

There are plenty of things he could be doing, but his head refuses to comply. It's bucking like a wild horse, trying to break out of its bony confines like a stream dammed by rocks. 

Well-meaning fellow humans who do not possess his somewhat eclectic hardwiring have suggested reading a book, watching television, all these normal pastimes when he's this restless, but they don't understand how impossible those things are. If he only could keep still. He keeps picking at his nail beds, walking around, opening and closing cupboard doors and drawers - in search of what, he doesn't even know.

John once called him a drama queen. "Just watch some telly, and stop fidgeting."

That had been only mildly insulting, because it had come from John's particular mouth. Sherlock had once considered giving the man something of an explanation as to why he behaves the way he does when his mind isn't sufficiently engaged by something worthwhile, but he'd been too frightened that John would cease to see him for Sherlock, and instead begin attributing everything, even the arguably brilliant bits, to words that were, at best, compromises and simplifications. Sherlock would have to use those very words to explain these things to John, because he doesn't really have any better ones, and John is a doctor who would certainly understand and take to heart the diagnoses made by his colleagues.

Diagnoses such as Asperger's. Words such as 'impaired', 'challenged', 'different' and worst of all, 'inherent'. Inherent, as in incurable, as in permanent. Inherent abilities. Inherent deficiencies. Bugs in the code of his DNA. 

_No_. As long as John is willing to tolerate him, he will have to do so on Sherlock's terms. Sherlock had had enough of well-meaning medical professionals by the time he'd turned eighteen. 

John is allowed to suture his wounds, to evaluate his concussions, to splint his sprained joints and to nag about inoculation boosters, but the rest of his issues - the things that are not the result of simple physical blunders during The Work, will never be discussed.

  
  


At three in the afternoon Sherlock gives into his cravings of tea, puts on some decent clothes and goes to Tesco. 

The organisation of the store is highly illogical. It takes him seven minutes to locate the tea shelves. 

The selection sends him reeling. There are at least 23 cheap bag varieties, but only a few loose leaf ones, the most expensive of which carries the incomprehensible brand name "teapigs". Hardly confidence-inspiring. 

He should have gone to Fortnum&Mason, from where he knows Mycroft gets his tea delivered. His brother might be a self-serving, smug, pompous, pretentious, irritating pillock but he does serve a decent brew.

After careful consideration Sherlock finds himself sentimentally succumbing to the charms of the rolling hills painted onto the packet of Taylor's Yorkshire Gold, studies the packet to make sure it's not decaffeinated, and heads for the cashier counters. 

Decaf tea ought to be illegal. There are some addictions he'll never let John cure.

 

 

There's a queue to the cashiers. Of course there's a queue, because how could the universe possibly grant him an uneventful, effortless visit to one of these wretched places. This means he'll have to endure the gnat-like sounds of the whinging freezers and the gloomy vibrating fluorescent lamps for what could be more than ten minutes. Unbearable. Why hadn't it occurred to him to send a member of his Homeless Network to on this brainless mission?

He turns his attention to the other shoppers. First in line for the cashiers are two clearly underage females attempting to buy alcohol, and their abysmal attempt is close to succeeding. It's obvious that the cashier, a fifty-something woman with cheap dress jewellery and a ghastly perm, is having a terrible flare-up of hemorrhoids and is thus too distracted to care about teens getting hold of some artificially sweetened version of Somersby Cider. 

John doesn't drink cider. Sherlock does not know if it's due to being partial to beer, the widepsread availability of which ensures that he need not settle for any other option, or a genuine dislike for the stuff. John does drink wine, but he almost never buys it. He appreciates it when Sherlock supplies the fridge with a sixpack of Guinness and insist on offering Sherlock one of them, even though John must know that he invariably declines.

It's a ritual. Sherlock has always looked down on such social niceties, but the crual human experiment John is conducting today on him that leaves him with too much time and too few things to do is cultivating an appreciation for things that can be anticipated.

As a child, he'd been a stickler to routine. He had multitudes of them, and if they were disturbed a meltdown was imminent. Adulthood had brought with it the opposite approach, somehow. Perhaps his strong tendency for impulsivity had overridden his neuroticism.

The teen girls giggle - an ear-piercing, high-pitched sound that makes him want to cover his ears. They've succeeded in their scheme, and are now making a hasty exit from the shop. Sherlock could, of course, point out to the cashier that a law had been broken here, but then again he couldn't care less. He'd been procuring and using, even manufacturing much more refined substances by the age of the giggling pair of underage idiots.

His nostrils pick up a familiar scent. It's faint, but hed recognize it even if it were even weaker. 

Ground tobacco leaves. 

The source - the shop's cigarette kiosk - is nearby, and taking his turn at that sales counter is someone who looks as exasperated as Sherlock feels. It's a man in his late twenties, wearing baggy track bottoms, worn sneakers and a ratty T-shirt commemorating some sports event. His hands are shaking as he waits for the salesperson to deliver him what he's asked for, a packet of rolling tobacco. There's a tiny tear in a package that's been abandoned on the counter - it must be the source of the intoxicating smell. The saleswoman gives the man an intact package and he grabs it with the pincer-like grip of an addict getting hold of his fix.

_Oh bollocks._

This is such utter ballcrap, as John probably would say.

He _wants_. 

So _terribly bad_. 

Every cell in his body is crying out for what is practically within his fingertips. Why is it that the man at the kiosk counter is allowed a moment's chemical respite from the constant sensory assault that is the entire planet, but Sherlock isn't? Why is the universe rewarding Sneaker Man, and punishing him?

His train of thought is derailed by an overhead announcement about a bulk discount for frozen peas. Maybe he ought to have picked up some. They're a good substitute for ice packs and projectile weapons.

The announcement repeats like a broken record, and the sound suddenly circulates so that there's a high-pitched whine emitted by the speaker attached to a nearby wall. Sherlock tenses involuntarily and fights the sudden panic that loud, unexpected noises that go on for more than a split second always manage to rouse in him. When the auditory weapon of mass destruction finally stops, Sherlock realizes he has squeezed the cardboard tea packet into a somewhat artistic shape.

There's a piece of a price label stuck on the conveyor belt. It's making a raspy sound as the belt moves. 

Sherlock swivels his head around for a general look at the crowd in the shop. Since it's two in the afternoon the store is mostly occupied by pensioners, people with substance abuse problems, the unemployed, the psychiatrically challenged and other such people marginalised by society. What does that make him, then?

The elderly woman just in front of him in the queue has a nerve-rackingly long coughing fit. After she has paid for her groceries she, too, makes a beeline for the cigarette kiosk. 

Sherlock wants to wrench the packet of whatever cheap excuse for a nicotine fix the woman is about to receive, light every and each one of them up, and smoke them while lying on his back on the conveyor belt. Maybe he could get an ASBO to match John's.

The queue advances, and he's now very close to that splendid fountain of nicotine. He could easily forget tea, swap queues and buy what he really wants.

What _is_ stopping him from buying a packet, then? 

John will know. The man is not a genius, but when it comes to Sherlock self-medicating with anything more harmful than aspirin, the man is like a telepathic bloodhound who can detect even the slightest whiff of tobacco on his clothes and who will suspect any changes in his behaviour to be the result of illicit drugs. Why couldn't John be that observant about more important things, such as The Work? 

Sherlock can easily bear the ire of every other human being on this planet, but not John's. Nobody else can make Sherlock feel so deeply pathetic with their disappointment. What is more, that feeling has a rather unpleasant undercurrent of pure, distilled fear: what if this is the moment John calls his bluff and sees him for what he is? What if John leaves? 

Would John leave over tea?

Or the smoking?

What would be his breaking point, really?

Sherlock wants never, ever, ever, ever to find out.

He sticks his hands into his pockets and wills himself to calm down just enough to be able to pay for the damned tea and get out.

It is right then and there that he realizes he has left his wallet at home.

 

 

He had left Tesco without the tea. On his way out, he _may_ have made some observations out loud about the organization of the store and the level of intellect of its employees. All that has nothing to do with the fact that he himself had been too riled up to remember his wallet but who could blame him - the stress of going to one of those places should be able to drive anyone round the bend. He admires John's patience and fortitude - he shops for groceries on a regular basis. Then again, he did once have an argument with a chip and pin machine. 

Sherlock prefers the chip-and-pin machines to the manned counters. They spare him from the intellectual thumb scrub that is small talk.

He could have easily pilfered the tea. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd done something like that, but he had only resorted to it out of necessity and desperation during his time of living on the streets, never when he's had enough money to buy what he needs. He suspects John would not have been impressed if he'd resorted to theft over a scrunched-up packet of Taylor's Yorkshire Floor Scrapings.

On his way home he stops at Mr Chatterjee's small shop at the junction of Melcombe and Baker. With some clever subterfuge (John would probably have described it as cruel bullying and blackmail) he manages to get a packet of decent quality loose leaf tea to be put on Mrs Hudson's tab.

The upside is that he now has successfully procured tea. The downside is that it's Earl Grey, and among the many smells Sherlock dislikes, bergamot is among the worst culprits. It practically makes his nostrils turn inside out with disgust. John likes it, which is one of his worst qualities, but one Sherlock is as willing to overlook this as he is John's terrible taste in music. 

 

 

There's strawberry ice-cream in the freezer. It's a couple of months old, and the milk fat has congealed on the surface of it into a thick, lard-like layer. It's edible, at least by John's standards, but even the smell of the artificial aroma of this cheap brand makes Sherlock feel as though he's sucking on a bar of scented soap. 

Strawberries of the fresh variety are acceptable, as foodstuffs go. The seeds are small enough not to get lodged into the nooks and crannies of molars, the water percentage is pleasant, no insects are at risk of being found inside the fruits - strawberry, genus Fragaria, is an aggregate accessory fruit, _not_ a berry - and it doesn't colour the mouth tissues like blueberries do. The seeds aren't actually seeds, as Sherlock had once pointed out as what he'd hoped would be an interesting starting point of conversation, when John had brought home one of his insipid dates. Apparently Sherlock had 'ruined the mood' somehow by elaborating on the fact that the seeds in question are actually the ovaries of strawberry flowers. Considering the proximity of ovaries to the parts of female anatomy John had clearly been interested in that evening, Sherlock had been confused as to the exact nature of his faux pas. John had not been willing to discuss the subject further. _"Just don't talk about ovaries in public, alright?"_

 

 

John texts him fifty-three minutes after he'd returned home with the tea that smells of hell. 

ON MY WAY HOME. ANY FOOD REQUESTS?

STRAWBERRIES. SH

NOT PROPER DINNER. IF YOU WENT TO TESCO LIKE I TOLD YOU, YOU COULD HAVE GOTTEN THEM YOURSELF. 

John is being obstinate. Couldn't he see the strawberries could be needed for an urgent, case-related experiment, the need for which has just been brought into his attention? The man's utter lack of imagination is flabbergasting.

Sherlock's phone chimes with another message from John.

CRAVINGS? :)

Sherlock abhors smileys even more than he hates ill-fitting trousers. Especially when John uses them to mock him. Sherlock has sworn not to stoop to such a level, ever. 

_Ever._

Unless, of course, he really, _really_ needs to use one to convey his annoyance and disapproval.

Just this once.

He sends John a jumble of letters which he thinks conveys his vexation perfectly.

It takes John two minutes to reply.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, IT LOOKS LIKE A FROG WITH A HAT

  
  


At 6:02 p.m. Sherlock perks up at the sound of footsteps coming from the direction of the staircase. The door opens and John enters, carrying a white plastic bag which, judging by its shape, likely contains takeout.

Sherlock gathers himself up to a sitting position on the sofe. He feels like a stiff heap of limbs. After deciding not to deign to answer John's text he'd gotten around to considering some potential changes to his blog - the first decent think he'd had all day. There are now several ideas in development about adding a search function that would allow quick access to all the pertinent chemistry indexes and databases he frequents, and an idea for a rather clever little trick he could use to more easily kick out the imbeciles from the comments section.

John takes in the fact that he's no longer wearing just a dressing gown. Sherlock knows this by the manner in which John's gaze rakes up and down his torso. Lingers, even.

_Curious._

"Today wasn't so difficult, now was it?" John asks in a perky tone. In general, Sherlock hates perky more than he hates Anderson, but somehow coming from John it doesn't bother him at all. He actually finds he wants to agree so that John would be happy. Sentiment. 

In the end, Sherlock decides to reply with a noncommittal guttural sound before turning on the television. He stretches his neck.

John goes to the kitchen, probably to dig out plates and cutlery for the takeout. Within the next minute or so he'll likely complain about there being no clean utensils. There never are.

"You've been out, then?" John asks conversationally after washing a couple of forks. 

Sherlock turns his head to reply and then witnesses John spotting the packet of Earl Grey he had pointedly arranged in the middle of the kitchen table. 

"My favourite. That's unusually thoughtful of you," John says with a smile that to Sherlock feels like it lights up the room and probably even the next few blocks towards Camden Town.

Sherlock rolls his eyes, but the smile he can't help quirking up his lips completely ruins the display of righteous indignation towards Earl Grey he'd been aiming for.

John is home. Everything is _interesting_ again.

 

**\- The End -**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank all the readers, kudos-pounders and commenters - this has been so much fun!
> 
> I'm exhilarated to tell you I've got two longer stories on the workbench. The first one I like to describe as "Garridebs... in _Iceland_. Its working title is "As Easy As Falling Off A Cliff".
> 
> The other is a sort of a return to my fic roots - more medical H&C than you can shake a stick at, combined with one of my favourite tags, _friends to lovers_. It will be called "The Breaking Wheel".


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